This book is such a mess. Here is how I imagined Simmons talking to himself when coming up with the ideas for it:

"I want to write another science fiction story. Something truly ground-breaking; clever science fiction which shows the world how clever and knowledgeable about literature I am.

I could write Homer's Iliad... in space! No; the Iliad... on Mars! A far-future terraformed Mars, with the Greek gods as super technologically advanced post-humans living on Olympus Mons, who for some reason are recreating the events of the Iliad.

Yes, that's fucking great.

The protagonist could be a 20th century Iliad scholar whose consciousness has been artificially preserved, and whose task is to monitor the Iliad events on Mars and compare them to Homer's account, for some reason. This way the reader will know that when I'm deviating from Homer's version, I'm fully aware of it and doing it deliberately. The scholar protagonist can also quote the Iliad while watching the events and talk about the merits of different translations and interpretations; fuck, that'll show 'em how clever I am!

SF fans reading it may be reminded of Roger Zelazny's 'Lord of Light', in which super technologically advanced post-humans recreate Hindu mythology on a colony planet in order to keep the masses under strict control. But I'll go one further than Zelazny and have my post-humans recreating Greek mythology for no obvious or believable reason except FOR TEH LOLS, and cos I'm clever.

That would certainly show people that I know my classical literature - but would they know I love more modern stuff too? Nabokov... in space? 'Ada, or Ardor'... on a far-future earth? YES: on a far-future Earth reminiscent of Michael Moorcock's 'The Dancers At The End of Time' - because Moorcock's story also features incest. Fucking yes - I am on to a winner with this one!

I will retell Nabokov's story of incestuous lovers struggling to reconcile their feelings for each other with the social taboo... on a far future earth in which that social taboo no longer exists!

That would show I know and appreciate 20th century literature, but what about all the good stuff between Homer and Nabokov? Readers must know I am well-read in this too.

I've got it.

There will be super intelligent, biomechanical constructs who live on the Moons of Jupiter. One of them will be an amateur Shakespeare scholar; another shall be an amateur Proust scholar. These constructs can chat to each other about how great Shakespeare and Proust are, and refer to the theories of various 20th century literary critics. They can quote extensively, perhaps even whole pages of Proust to show the reader I really know my shit. Later on I can probably work in a retelling of Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' or something, to really hammer it home. I'll figure something out."

This book is so bad in so many ways. I was tempted to give up on it multiple times, but I was interested enough in the story to keep going. Had I found a decent online summary, I would probably have happily given up; alas, I found none and persevered. My review will therefore summarize the whole story, perhaps saving some people from the effort of reading its 500+ pages.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Thomas Hockenberry is a scholic, a 20th century scholar whose job is to monitor the recreated Iliad events and report to the gods on how accurately they match Homer's descriptions. Perhaps there is an explanation in the sequel as to why this job is a thing. Hock is an extremely bland character. For most of his story he feels like an empty space for the reader to insert himself: he watches the story, or has it imposed on him, and doesn't start to drive it until one pivotal scene, described later. When he starts to have character, he becomes quite unpleasant: he remembers his old 20th/21st century life, and moans about the 'Political Correctness Brigade' having so much sway back then. I'm fine with unpleasant protagonists, but he's unpleasant in an extremely boring way.

While observing, the scholics use 'Morphing Bracelets' to disguise themselves as a Greek or Trojan character of their choosing. There is a bullshit quantum science explanation as to how this works.

Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, chooses Hockenberry for a special task: to kill Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, for some reason. To aid him, the goddess gives him three useful magic-science items: a levitation harness, a Quantum Teleportation (QT) Medallion, and the Hades Helmet.

The gods use Quantum Teleportation to travel around Earth-Mars, to instantaneously go from Olympus Mons to Troy - now Hockenberry has this power, and, because this medallion is special, his "QT trail" can only be tracked by Aphrodite. There is a bullshit quantum science explanation as to how this works.

The Hades Helmet makes the wearer invisible to everyone except Aphrodite. The fact that the gods have invisibility technology, and the means to select who it doesn't work with, makes me wonder why the gods didn't just make the scholics invisible to humans but not gods. The scholics are supposed to observe and report, not interfere, yet we are told that because of the bullshit quantum science behind morphing, this can and does interfere with events - so why not just make them invisible? I suppose the morphing is important for plot reasons.

Aphrodite is seriously wounded in combat by the Trojan warrior Diomedes. She is out of action, cooped up in a healing tank in the Infirmary of the Gods. The gods can't track or see him; Hockenberry is free to do as he pleases. And what shall his first act of freedom and self-determination be? He teleports to Helen of Troy's apartment, morphs into Paris, and has sex with her.

Post-rape, Helen confronts Hockenberry with a dagger, asking who he really is. "A woman may forget the color of her lover's eyes, the tone of his voice, even the details of his smile or form, but she cannot forget how her husband fucks." Hock reveals his true form, feels pathetic, and...

"Your penis is larger [than Paris']."

And after rebuking him for raping her via deception, Helen... invites him to bed again for more sex.

Let's just go through that scene again. Hock, a gawky scholar character, is now invisible to divine authority, free to do as he pleases. So he disguises himself as the husband of the Most Beautiful Woman in the World and tricks her into having sex with him. While she rebukes him for raping her, Helen compliments Hock's big cock and says he was 'earnest' and 'sincere' during sex - she then invites him to bed for more sex. This is so crass and awful it sounds like a rape-fantasy porn scene.

Hock doesn't feel very guilty about deceiving Helen. I know rape occurs a lot in Greek mythology, and it's probably been included here to echo the Greek gods raping mortals so often, but it's handled so badly. It feels more like a creepy adolescent fantasy than a wry comment on the prevalence of rape in classical myths.

And Helen becomes his quasi love interest for the remainder of the book.

After this act of male empowerment, Hock feels like he should do other things with his power to evade the gods. He is upset by the thought of Helen's fate in the Iliad, so decides to change events to save her and all of the people who will suffer because of the fall of Troy. He decides to unite the Greek and the Trojans against a common enemy: the Gods of Olympos. We will return to Hockenberry & Co later, but now we must turn our attention to "Ada in the Future".

Daeman is a womanizing knobhead, off to a party where his objective for the evening is to seduce his cousin Ada. That's his motivation for the whole story. After a few chapters it seems even Simmons got bored of incest Daeman and relegated him to a background character role. It is quickly established that incest is not a taboo on this future Earth so there is nothing interesting about Daeman, no psychological conflict or guilt or shame. As far as he is concerned, he is just lusting after an attractive female - her being his cousin makes literally no difference to him. It feels like the whole point of the 'Ada in the Future' thing is ruined within a few chapters, and Simmons moves on and almost forgets about it - Daeman's incestuous ambitions are barely mentioned for the remainder of the book.

At the party, he meets Harman and Hannah. Harman is an older man approaching the maximum lifespan allowed: he wants to fly a spaceship to the space stations in orbit where the post-humans who govern the Earth live, so he can beg for a longer lifespan. Hannah is so bland I could have forgotten she was in this book.

The 4 of them - Harman, Hannah, Daeman, and Ada - go on a little trip to try to find a spaceship, They meet Savi, a mysterious old woman who seems to know a lot about what's going on, and Odysseus, the Greek hero. The group of 6 travel around Future Earth in Savi's 'sonie' - an aerial vehicle - to look at things and have boring conversations.

The general population of Future Earth have no culture or literature or education, and are completely ignorant of how the technology they use works. So, as they're travelling around and having conversations, the four ignorant people often ask Savi about their world and the technology in it. Savi invariably replies in a vague way which leaves the four barely less confused and ignorant, but allows the reader - who can understand big words and has been reading the novel's other two storylines - to get a better idea of the world and what's going on. When one of the ignorants respond with "I don't understand" - a phrase repeated so often it seems to have become a joke even to Simmons by the end - Savi replies with some variant of "Ah, but you will soon!" or "Yeah I know but it's fun talking in this vague way lol". She is so blatantly talking for the reader's, not their companions', benefit. The conversations are painfully artificial.

What's more, when an ignorant one asks about something which the reader will already know about - how a compass works, for example - Savi one will not bother explaining, simply saying "It doesn't matter" or "By magic", because the reader needs no explanation. So Savi will give a long bullshit quantum science explanation for some technology they encounter, which goes completely over the heads of her companions but may benefit the reader, but refuses to explain simpler things which may actually be understood by her companions. (Given how thoroughly bullshit the quantum science explanations are, "By magic!" would also be a more honest and accurate answer.) It left me wondering why any of them trust her when, as far they're concerned, she is talking complete nonsense. Harman wants a spaceship and thinks she's the means to find one. Ada fancies Harman. Hannah...? And Daeman... fancies Ada?

After plenty of conversations and the occasional action set-piece, the group splits. Ada, Hannah, and Odysseus return to Ada's home - Odysseus begins preaching and becomes a sort of cult figure. Harman, Savi, and Daeman fly to the 'Mediterranean Basin', to find a way to get to the space stations. Daeman's reasons for joining Harman and Savi are very weak: he is afraid of the Allosaurs living in the forests by Ada's home, and doesn't want to teleport from Ada's home to his own because now he understands the technology a little more: Savi had explained it involves destroying his old self and creating a copy elsewhere - Daeman finds this disconcerting. He decides to join the crazy quest rather than ask to be dropped off at his own home on the way to the Mediterranean (Ada lives in North America, Daeman in Paris).

Now we must leave the Earthlings and turn to our third storyline.

Mahnmut and Orphu are moravecs, autonomous biomechanical beings living on the moons of Jupiter (there are also moravecs living on asteroids). They are recruited by the Five Moons Consortium, along with a bunch of other moravecs, to go on a mission to terraformed Mars. Their objective: place and activate a mysterious Device on Olympus Mons.

Mahnmut is roughly humanoid in shape and is an amateur Shakespeare scholar. Orphu is like a giant crab, and is very enthusiastic about the works of Marcel Proust. The two of them converse about their literary heroes, discussing 20th century critics, quoting huge passages, and generally having a great time nerding out together.

The other moravecs are given no personality - which is lucky for the reader because they may otherwise have cared when they all died when the ship gets shot down as it approaches Mars. M&O crash into a Martian sea, and spend several chapters trying to make it to shore while also chatting about human literature. Although Simmons tries to amp up the tension here, the whole 'Trying To Get To Shore' section is overlong and dull. Since Simmons clearly enjoys writing their smartypants Shakespeare-Proust conversations, and has invested in the characters by giving them personality - they are perhaps the best characters in the novel - there is no real sense of danger in their story. I didn't believe Simmons would be willing to kill either of them off, especially not so early in the story, so this section just drags on and on. 'WILL THEY MAKE IT TO SHORE?' the narrative asks, again and again. Of course they will, and they do.

Once ashore, they encounter a photosynthetic species, the Little Green Men, who conveniently have a fleet of ships and can spare one for the moravecs' journey to Olympos. A storm hits while they sail, and the two moravecs quote The Tempest at each other, and Simmons explains some of the unfamiliar terms for the reader's benefit.

During this story we are treated to the Most Thoroughly Bullshit quantum science conversation in the whole book, and possibly in all literature. Ey m8, says Orphu (I'm paraphrasing heavily), you know cos consciousness is a quantum wavelength, what if the literary greats of the past created new quantum universes with the force of their quantum consciousness imagination? What if quantum technology is the reason the Greek Gods, and Shakespeare's characters, are coming in to the world? The barriers between this world and these quantum universes are weakening and allowing the fictional to become the real.

Not only is this thoroughly bullshit, it makes the book feel so much cheaper, like cheesy crossover fanfic or The Pagemaster for adults.

Eventually, M&O board a fancy hot air balloon and start flying to Olympos. They are captured by the gods and taken to Zeus for questioning.

This all covers the first 300 pages; now the 3 stories start to converge and get more exciting. Or rather, it now feels like the stories are actually beginning. The chapters covering Hock's efforts to unite the Trojans and Greeks are done relatively well. Conveniently for M&O, Hock turns up at Olympos just as Mahnmut is being questioned so helps them escape. Mahnmut borrows the Invisibility Helmet in order to plant the Device secretly, then joins Hock in Troy. The gods decide to bomb Troy to show off their power; Hock compares the carnage during the bombardment to news footage he remembers of 9/11 and the Iraq War - these paragraphs felt very jarring, like they were thrown in for topicality.

Once the extremely slow build-up is over, Ilium feels like a trashy yet very entertaining action movie. During the chaos, with explosions and screaming civilians around them, Helen finds Hock and kisses him goodbye and good luck before he teleports away, in a scene that would definitely be accompanied by suddenly emotional music in a movie adaptation, and would perhaps be in slow motion.

(I forgot to mention earlier, there is a scene where Hock gets captured and interrogated by a group of women. One of them holds a knife to his testicles to get him to talk. Hock describes this knife as a 'feminist blade'.)

The Device activates.

In Troy, portals open up in the sky and on the ground, through which Olympos is visible. The converse occurs around Olympos. We learn that Troy was not on Mars after all - it is a version of Earth, connected to Mars with quantum tunneling or something. (No doubt the sequel will confirm Troy's Earth is in the quantum reality created by Homer.)

Strange tripods emerge from some of the portals. "I think I know who these guys are," says Orphu.

At this point I'm ready to throw the book across the room if the tripods are Martians from a quantum reality created by H.G. Wells. Thankfully they are not: it is an army of moravecs, here to lay siege to Olympos. They join with the Greek-Trojan alliance, and march through the portals towards the home of the gods. The Little Green Men also show up and join the alliance. Zeus erects a huge force field to protect Olympos.

The stage is set for the sequel, the siege of Olympos.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Daeman & Co visit Jerusalem, where the sonie is captured by strange robotic things called Voynix. The group escape. In the Mediterranean, they find strange chairs which enable them to travel up to a space station, and then break.

The reader is treated to an extended horror sequence, which is done rather well but is overlong. The group explore the space station, floating zero G past bodies and severed limbs and ruined technology.

They encounter Caliban, a strange lizard monster who speaks in a vaguely Shakespearean way. Savi is killed but we don't care because she was little more than a mouthpiece for Simmons to explain things to the reader. Daeman and Harman wander round the space station, wondering if they'll be killed by Caliban or find some way to escape.

The spacestation is Prospero's island - we are now at The Tempest in Space. Prospero, an AI hologram, explains that Ariel, a mysterious entity on Earth, saved Savi's Sonie from the Voynix and programmed it to rescue them from the space station. Turns out the sonie was a spaceship after all and if Savi had been aware of this they could have skipped a lot of the wandering around. The characters accept this revelation calmly. It feels a very lazy way to get them to escape. Prospero even jokes that it is "another deux ex machina."

They plan to destroy the space station - but wait, what about all the people in the infirmary!? For when a human on Earth gets ill or injured, they are sent up here for recovery! So rather than a fast escape sequence we get a long admin sequence in which Daeman and Harman travel to the infirmary, fiddle around with the functioning technology to send the recovering people back to Earth. The power cuts out and there's one person still in the healing tanks: Hannah. The bland character from earlier returns as the bland damsel in distress. This sequence becomes even longer. So yeah, eventually they all escape and return to Earth. Odysseus vaguely and ominously speaks about the need for everyone to prepare for the Ultimate War spreading to this Earth. Obviously none of the characters have a clue what he's on about, but the reader does.

END OF BOOK

The mostly action-packed final 200 pages of this book almost, almost made me want to read the sequel. There is a decent, entertaining novel hidden within Ilium, which could be revealed by a determined editor. Much of the first 300 pages could be removed. The long multi-chapter travel sequences could be more effectively told in one or two chapters. Hock doesn't need to spend so much time watching the Iliad events before gaining agency. The incest aspect could be entirely removed; Daeman could be removed, leaving Harman as a more interesting protagonist. Unnecessary Nabokov references are unnecessary.

I loved Hyperion, and persevered through its disappointing sequel. After reading Ilium, I probably won't touch another Dan Simmons novel. Maybe, just maybe, I'll read Song of Kali, his shortish debut novel sometime, from back when his editor probably cared more about the quality. Maybe.

DNF

Update: After thinking about the book for three weeks and comparing it with the other books read and ratings given this month AND despite my misgivings about the beginning and not really liking the parts about the Greeks all that much, I decided to upgrade the rating to a full five stars. The scope of the book was just so great, it really deserves the highest rating.

*~*~*~*
I did not enjoy the first 50 pages or so. I was confused and wondering what was going on. I though I would DNF this, before I hit a hundred pages.

But the moravecs had me at „Mars“...

They passed Mars's orbit and there was nothing to see; Mars, of
course, was on the opposite side of the sun. They passed Earth's orbit a day later and there was nothing to see; Earth was far around the curve of its orbit on the plane of the ecliptic far below.

The humans eventually grew on me, too.

A third of the way into the novel, I still did not like the parts taking place during the Trojan War though. They felt superfluous, too detailed and bored me. Greek mythology has never really been my thing. But even here Hockenberry finally managed to win me over.

Great world building, great ideas, very dense and not for a casual read. Good, in the end. I might read the next book, Olympos, eventually. I am a little scared it might not be as good.

Ilium is almost as ambitious as the Hyperion Cantos. Unfortunately, while it contains many interesting elements, it falls quite short of Simmon's magnum opus. Full disclsoure: this review is being written before I have read the sequel.

Simmons' style has not changed much from the Hyperion Cantos. It is functional and descriptive, but nothing more. Despite the amount of time spent describing certain structures, such as the various apparatuses on the rings, I still felt at a loss as to what they looked like, which means that those sometimes extended passages were complete wastes of time. Similarly, as other reviewers have noted, Simmons goes into pseudo-scientific jargon describing various constructs and then has his characters claim ignorance at the end anyway. This is not hard sci-fi, so those instances are particularly irritating. A final complaint is that there are way too many descriptions of "boobs" and female anatomy that serve no interesting purpose. The main character is a playboy, but the significance of that is never mentioned, nor do the other characters even seem to be aware of that presumably defining trait.

Simmon's unique prosaic strength in this work is his emulation of his inspirations. The novel begins with a twist on the opening lines of the Iliad, there are frequent references to Proust, Shakespeare, Nabokov. Toward the end of the book, we get a remarkable description of battle arrays that feels lifted from the Homeric epics. Given Simmons' literary project, there are necessary flourishes.

There are plenty of themes and content in the book. In the plot itself, we encounter transhumanism, self-aware AI, biospheres and noospheres, anti-Semitism (in a world without Jews, no less), free will, intellectual and cultural degredation that is explicitly compared to the society of the eloi in The Time Machine, control of humanity by outside forces, terraforming and space colonization, rebellion, to name some of many. The reader is also treated -- or subjected -- to literary analysis of Shakespeare and Proust by various cyborgs. Whether their metafictional conclusions tie into the plot can only be determined in the second book; they certainly seem disconnected in the first.

Simmons' characterization is decent, but not as solid as in the Hyperion Cantos. Daeman undergoes a nice character arc, and while Ada and Harman and Hannah have personalities, they generally have defining traits ("curiosity," "love," etc.). I do not need internal psychological monologs in all my novels, so I was fine with the distinctions between characters. The motivations of the characters are clear, and while the protagonist Hockenberry -- a revived Homeric scholar with little memory of his previous life -- is pretty obviously a reader stand-in, he still managed to take clear (if sometimes inexplicably misguided) actions on his own agency.

I cannot go into too much more discussion of the themes because they are merely set up in this doorstopper; all of the resolution will hopefully come in the second volume.

The book seems to face two weaknesses of plot: the first is that it is needlessly long. The moravec journey is dragged out as much as possible with little reward. Hockenberry's antics are sometimes extraneous or redundant (how many times does he need to sleep with Helen in great detail?), and the old-style human plot takes forever to get going. Concision, especially when only at the end of the book does anything really happen, would have been greatly appreciated here.

Second, all of the literary allusions feel arbitrary. The premise of a Trojan War happening for mysterious circumstances again in the future (or the past? or...) is great. Having characters discuss literature is great, especially if those digressions have relevance to the larger plot (cf. the pirate narrative in Watchmen). Having absurdly specific allusions form the core of the plot without explanation is less tolerable. Partway through the book is some mumbo-jumbo about alternate universes in which works created by genuises become real. Perhaps this is the source of the Greeks, Trojans, gods, and Propsero/Ariel/Caliban? Of course, nothing is settled, but the question arises of how Simmons feels qualified to select who is a genius and why, in-universe, those particular literary constructs have been reified. Why is the noosphere Prospero rather than Gatsby or Jean Valjean or King Arthur or Cao Cao or any other character?

Were it merely arbitrary nomenclature selected Prospero's creator, I would be content. Yet Prospero and Caliban actually exhibit traits of their Shakespearean personalities, and the latter quotes extensively from Browning's "Caliban Upon Setebos." This actually makes the entire situation less satisfying to me. I think perhaps I would have been fine with either The Tempest or The Iliad being treated in the way they are in this novel separately, but when both are combined, I am asking myself what in-universe reason there is for the combination. The Hyperion Cantos skirted this issue successfully by having more and less plot-defining allusions. This book is the opposite, and therefore displeases me, at least in this regard.

Overall, a fine book, and I look forward to Olympos, but anyone looking for a definitive Simmons work should instead read the Hyperion Cantos.

After loving the Hyperion Quartet and remarking that Iliad won a Nebula prize, I dove into this duology and really enjoyed it. As the Dude might say, “It really tied the room together” with some explanations of the destruction of Earth 1400 years before Hyperion. The mix of sci-fi and mythology/fantasy was entertaining and as always, Dan Simmons gives geeks tons of mind-candy to ponder. I liked the primary characters and found the story fairly well-balanced and the narrative readable and compelling. Definitely worth reading., especially if you want to see how that black hole in Hyperion ended up eating Earth...

A fantastic sci-fi epic in the tradition of Simmons's Hyperion Cantos. In Ilium, as in the Hyperion books, Simmons really shows off his knowledge of classical literature. He obviously knows the Iliad and the Odyssey inside and out, but the author (through his characters) also fills this book with literary and historical references to Shakespeare, Proust, and a dozen other sources. It's ingenious and it made me to resolve to finally get around to reading the Iliad myself once I've finished this series.

Set in the 40th century, Ilium is a retelling of the Iliad. Kind of. We begin with "scholic" Thomas Hockenberry, who was an early 21st century classics professor revived by the Olympian gods in the 40th century to monitor the ongoing Trojan War — which is taking place on Mars.

"Wait, what?" you are thinking. The "gods" are creatures of super-science, using unimaginable powers of quantum manipulation and nanotechnology to take on the roles and attributes of the classical Greek deities. And not just the big names either — while all the old familiar gods like Zeus and Athena and Aphrodite of course figure heavily into the plot, Simmons, through his educated protagonist Hockenberry, encounters scores of minor named gods and heroes as well.

Just why the gods are reenacting the Iliad on a terraformed Mars is not made clear by the end of this volume, but the heroes — Achilles, Hector, Paris, Odysseus, etc — are also as epic as the gods, thanks to both nanotech enhancements and literal interbreeding between gods and mortals, just like in the myths.

Hockenberry and his fellow scholics are basically embedded journalists for the gods, but although they all know how the Iliad ends, they have been forbidden by Zeus to tell any of the other gods. The gods know that the scholics know how Homer said the story is supposed to end, but they've been forbidden to ask the scholics. So they continue playing their games with mortal lives.

And then Hockenberry is recruited by one of the gods for a clandestine mission to kill another god. And with the "magic artifacts" he's been given, he's able to change a key event. And suddenly we're not in the Iliad anymore. And Hockenberry, who's now a dead man as soon as the gods catch up to him, decides to change the story completely.

This would be a pretty awesome story all by itself, but in fact Hockenberry is only one of three main protagonists. There are two other subplots which eventually merge into the Iliad on Mars. A pair of "Moravecs" — a race of sentient robots built by post-humans before they disappeared, now living out among the moons of Jupiter — is on a mission of their own. Not having paid much attention to the inner system for generations, they discovered a lot of dangerous quantum manipulation and advanced terraforming on Mars. When they go to investigate, their ship is shot down... in orbit, by a bearded man in a chariot throwing a lightning bolt at them.

Mahnmut and Orphu, the only two survivors, try to make it across Mars, aided by mysterious "Little Green Men" who seem to be creations of neither early humans nor the gods. The two robots, whose dialog is kind of reminiscent of R2D2 and C3PO, if C3PO were a Shakespeare scholar and R2D2 were fond of Proust, add a bit of comedy relief to the story, but eventually have a role to play in the climactic confrontation between gods and mortals.

Finally, there are the last surviving humans on Earth, a tiny population of laborless dilettantes with little to do but go to parties and play musical beds. Their world has been created by the long-gone post-humans, who created teleportation networks around the world, set up a system in which all remaining humans are carefully population-controlled and do not have to work or want for anything. They are granted perfect health until their "fifth twenty," when they report for exterminationascension to the outer rings, Logan's Run-style. But as Eloi-like as the remaining human race may be (they are actually called "Eloi" by one of the old-time humans they later meet), the spark of curiosity hasn't completely died in all of them. A few set off on an unplanned adventure, and discover truths about their world... and that there are Morlocks.

Ilium is so rich in world-building and has such a tangled plot that there were occasional bits that lost me — I am still not sure of the role of Caliban, the Little Green Men are just strange, and we don't yet have an answer to the question of why super-advanced godlike beings have resurrected the entire cast of the Iliad on a terraformed Mars. But hopefully those questions will be answered in the second book, which I will be reading soon.

Bláznivé, epické, vtipné, majstrovské.
"O hněvu Achillea, syna Péleova, zabijáka soucit neznajícího, osudem k smrti předurčeného, nám zpívej, ó Múzo."
V dvojdielnom epose Ílion a Olymp, priamo odkazujúcom na Iliadu a Odyseu, sa preplieta neuveriteľný príbeh starogréckych hrdinov trójskej vojny a rozmarných bohov ("Je snadné být bohem. Když k tomu máte to správné vybavení.") a inteligentných robotických prieskumných sond, ktoré skúmali mesiace Jupitera (keď to Simmons písal, nemohol ešte vedieť o fúre nových objavov), ale teraz sú na ceste zistiť príčiny zvýšenej kvantovej aktivity na Marse a vo voľnom čase analyzujú Shakespearovu Búrku a Prousta. Dystopický obraz Zeme po kataklizme, Globálny Kalifát, ľudstvo v troskách kontrolované voynixmi (áno, odkaz na rukopis). Slovom, veľmi divoký guláš, ktorý dá naplno vyniknúť autorovej vášni pre príbeh a rozprávačstvo, nespočet odkazov na vedu, históriu, filozofiu, popkultúru. Hlboká poklona prekladateľovi (Petr Kotrle), toto musel byť záhul.
Po prečítaní som sa konečne dokopal k Iliade a Odysei, ale aj k Búrke. Prečítať e-knihu nestačilo, chcem mať v poličke.

There are a lot of very polarizing views on this book, people either love it or hate it. I think I'm right in the middle. I'm entertained by Dan Simmons writing in general and a story centered on the Iliad written as a sci fi epic is an intriguing idea at the least. However, it takes half the book before you even have a clue of what is going on and even longer to really get how the worlds are connected. What I mean is that the Iliad is on Earth in the BCs and the post humans playing Gods are centered on the peaks of Olympos Mons in Mars. We follow a scholar set up by the gods to follow the story as it's played out in real time. Then there are four idiot humans who live on earth in a technological paradise but with no education. They seek a way to escape to the wherever the post humans got to. Finally there are four highly sentient robots who seek out the quantum disturbances on Mars. I liked the robots a lot but so many other characters are poorly setup and developed. Much of the book seems like Simmons is just trying to impress the reader with his knowledge of Homer and Shakespeare instead of telling a compelling story.

Time to pimp ones´ mythological session with some sci-fi elements.

Some people don´t see this one as the same ingenious work as Hyperion and Endymion and I don´t get why. It´s not that über, true, but it´s still some of the best a science fantasy hybrid reader can wish for. There is, for instance, and as far as I know, nothing of the same quality and perfection that combines mythology with sci-fi, fantasy with space opera style fractions, and in general dares to dance at many genre weddings.

Retelling classic tales, Simmons uses very different technological levels of fractions, old evil, decadence, some grain of quantum, and the splendid characterization to describe one a bit different Trojan war. Although the certainty that much or most of human history isn´t just ancient fake news written by the winners isn´t that big.

Gods playing with tiny, unimportant immortals is always such a fun, especially when a big surprise about the background of this free time, or full time, entertainment is unveiled. Now one could go different philosophical sci-fi routes for why aliens, gods, future humans via time travel, AIs simulating the universe, etc. should do this, because of boredom, for research, ancestor simulations, as a show, because they are mentally sick and that´s what future psychiatric therapies are like, simulating for getting sane again.

Apropos, philosophy, there is again so much extra easter egg goodie fun hidden by the highly bibliophile author, that especially classic and mythology prone readers might find their Elysium, or whatever version of heaven they prefer, maybe even nasty hellish versions of it, with it, everyone´s personal choice, I don´t judge.

The reason why this might not be seen as as groundbreaking as Hyperion is that it´s more fantasy and thereby, of course, not that complex, interwoven, and big as the space opera fantasy hybrid Hyperion was. Still, a fascinating work with extra seductiveness for history nerds.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

Meh. Reads like a English lit major who has always been told they are "gifted," took a few classics seminars, and is butt sore over Islam. Stick with Hyperion

Fantascienza e mitologia insieme. Risultato affascinante!
Dopo Hyperion, un altro capolavoro di Simmons. Forse gli manca qualcosa come fluidità e il finale è monco, molte cose restano ancora da chiarire e il lettore è costretto ad andare al secondo tomo della serie (Olympos), ma è veramente coinvolgente, con un mix di personaggi vario e ben assortito. Ci sono tre linee di racconto che si intrecciano vorticosamente e ti tengono incollato al libro. A un certo punto ho perso il filo temporale e onestamente non ho più capito se fossero tutte concomitanti o se, più verosimilmente, si svolgessero su piani temporali diversi destinati a riconciliarsi in Olympos. Cinque stelle meritatissime!

Dan Simmons lo vuelve a hacer

Tomando como base libros de literatura clásica, aquí La Iliada, y unas menciones a La Tempestad, nos entrega una obra de sci-fi que te mantiene interesado en todo momento sobre lo que pasa.

Aquí inicialmente tenemos tres hilos conductores
- una especie de robots llamados moravecs que van en una misión a Marte a investigar que pasa, uno es fan de Shakespeare otro de Proust
- Un scholic (profesor de literatura que hace como testigo de la guerra de Troya por orden de los dioses)
- Un grupo de humanos al-viejo-estilo en el futuro que tienen una aventura y un misterio

Y con esos tres hilos va tejiendo una historia interesante, al mismo tiempo compleja pero fácil de seguir, con personajes variados desde algunos odiables hasta otros que te cautivan (por alguna razón en mi caso fue uno de los robotitos), con ideas de porque o como que generan un cierto nivel de intriga.

Y ese cliffhanger, no puedo esperar a leer el segundo libro

Si no le llega al nivel de Hyperion, pero aun así sus 5 estrellas